Real-World Economics Review

from Dean Baker With a Democrat in the White House, the season of the deficit hawk has returned. So, it’s worth going through the old arguments just to remind everyone that the best response to these people is ridicule. It looks like President Biden will propose a robust stimulus package of well over $1 trillion. According to press accounts, the package is likely to include another check for $2,000. (I believe it is supposed to $1,400 above the $600 in the last package.) It is likely to...

from Lars Syll When no formal theory is available, as is often the case, then the analyst needs to justify statistical specifications by showing that they fit the data. That means more than just “running things.” It means careful graphical and crosstabular analysis … When I present this argument … one or more scholars say, “But shouldn’t I control for every-thing I can? If not, aren’t my regression coefficients biased due to excluded variables?” But this argument is not as persuasive...

from Asad Zaman An article by Alan Hajek in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists six major categories of definitions. Many more are possible if causality is also taken into account. These definitions conflict with each other, and face serious problems as interpretations of real-world probabilities. The basic definition of probability we will offer in this lecture falls outside all of these listed categories. Before going on to present it, we briefly explain why there is such massive...

– the vital difference between a “firm” and a “corporation” from Peter Radford I am learning that it takes a while to come to terms with the trauma of an attempted coup. Various people are reacting differently depending on their state of mind prior to the attempt.  What catches my eye, given my own perspective on the role of business in society, is the pressure emerging on our large corporations.  Having spent the past few years busily ignoring the moral corruption and ineptitude of the...

from C. P. Chandrasekhar It’s a paradox that has periodically recurred in recent times. Financial indicators are hugely favourable from the point of view of those who benefit from them, even when the performance of the real economy is poor or dismal. In this Covid-afflicted year, that paradox has manifested itself with greater intensity. And with a difference. Even while the real economy remains in contractionary mode, not only have stock market returns exploded, but India’s stock of...

from Lars Syll Most work in econometrics and regression analysis is — still — made on the assumption that the researcher has a theoretical model that is ‘true.’ Based on this belief of having a correct specification for an econometric model or running a regression, one proceeds as if the only problem remaining to solve have to do with measurement and observation. When things sound too good to be true, they usually aren’t. And that goes for econometric wet dreams too. The snag is, of...

from Peter Radford The crisis lingers on. One would think, although we are now in an odd world, that abetting, instigating, and applauding an attack on Congress would result in more than a gentle rebuke.  Apparently not.  The wheels of American politics move extremely slowly and the perpetrator of the crime still is hunkered down in the White House bloviating, no doubt, about how he was robbed of his victory in November’s election.  Perhaps there will be enough spine amongst those who...

from Thomas Palley It is now four days since the January 6 mob attack on the US Congress which President Donald Trump incited. In a manner akin to a combat situation, the numbness induced by the overwhelming nature of the event is giving way to shock and anger. What is also becoming clear is just how close US democracy came to dying. Sliding Doors The film Sliding Doors begins with two different scenarios in which the course of the main protagonist’s life depends on whether or not she...

from Lars Syll Worst of all, when we feel pumped up with our progress, a tectonic shift can occur, like the Panic of 2008, making it seem as though our long journey has left us disappointingly close to the State of Complete Ignorance whence we began … It often takes years down the Path, but sooner or later, someone articulates the concerns that gnaw away in each of us and asks if the Assumptions are valid … It would be much healthier for all of us if we could accept our fate, recognize...

. Eurostat has recently published new data on EU unemployment. It’s going down again. Which seems good. But there is more to this than meets the eye. To be counted as ‘unemployed’ one has to have no ‘gainful employment’ and to be actively seeking for a job. People who give up seeking are not counted as unemployed. Neither are people leaving the labor market. And people are giving up seeking as well as leaving the labor market… Eurostat has engineered a ‘dashboard’ which maps the...